Recording: Bile Sister

Artist: Bile Sister

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Tranzac (Main Hall), June 14, 2025.

Bile Sister - unknown

It'd been a stretch since I'd caught a performance from Julie Reich's long-running weird-pop project. Reich has been busy exploring "microtonal rock" and other theoretical advances but stepped right into a set that felt both like continuation and expansion of Bile Sister's past work. With bassist Chris Worden and a synthesist joining her in trio format, Reich sang with a new confidence in delivering some disco bangers, including an electro cover of "All I Have to Do is Dream" with special guest Zoë Alexis-Abrams as well as this Young Marble Giants-inflected number.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Julie Reich

Artist: Julie Reich

Song: unknown [edit]^*

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #44), November 6, 2018.

Julie Reich - unknown [edit]

Taking a breather from Bile Sister and her other musical identities, Julie Reich brought some new gear and new sounds out of the house for the first time, giving a preview of some tasty new synth explorations. Finding out how temperamental analog gear acts out of its usual environment was just one goal in this set, showing off some well-constructed pieces. Hopefully these sounds (along with a burgeoning sideline in videogame soundtracks) will find some more avenues into the world in the new year.

[The first Tuesday of January is New Year's Day, so TCB is making a rare shift to the second week and joining forces with Andrew Furlong's JAOIM series. We'll be co-presenting Lina Allemano's Titanium Riot plus McEachern/West/Zurawinski on January 8th. Not to be missed!]

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Chandra

Artist: Chandra

Song: Stranger

Recorded at Lula Lounge, July 26, 2018.

Chandra - Stranger

Now well beyond the novelty stage, the Chandra band has become a wonderfully groovy new wave force to be reckoned with. Chandra Oppenheim, who originally recorded these songs as a pre-teen, now fronts a unit powered by an all-star force of local rockers — including Julie Reich and Vic Cheong (vox, melodica), Penny Clark (guit), Nyles Miszczyk (bass), Jesse Locke (drums) plus Kristina Koski (keyb). Looking a bit like a fashionable cult, the group took advantage of Lula's excellent sound system for a superb-sounding set. More of Oppenheim's old demos are being added to the setlist supplementing the material from the Transportation EP (which has, sadly, apparently disappeared from Bandcamp) so one can only hope that we'll get some "new" material soon.

Recording: Body Double

Artist: Body Double

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 1 late-night afterparty), February 24, 2017.

Body Double - unknown

Once again, the Somewhere There Music Festival offered an oasis of local creativity, tightly bundled into five events over three days. Leading off, as always, with a community member's reflections, the first show featured a talk from David Dacks on building relationships and finding a project's true purpose while striving to program forward-looking music. Healing Power was given the task of programming the late-night sets in the Southern Cross after things had wrapped up in the Main Hall, presenting the debut of this new collaboration between New Positions' Vic Cheong and Bile Sister's Julie Reich. There were elements of each of their bands' sounds in play here, in a set with a few already-polished gems (like this melodica-driven reggae number) alongside some tracks that felt more like works in progress. "Don't show me the rough cut, show me the final version," a sampled/looped conversation between the pair cheekily intoned between songs. That recorded banter was a repeating presence, making this feel like a glimpse into the pair's scrapbook, mindspace and practice space with chatter about identity and reality being processed into Bechdel-tested avant-pop.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Chandra

Artist: Chandra

Songs: Tish Le Dire + A Day Without Success

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength SEVENTEEN – Night 1), February 17, 2017.

Chandra - Tish Le Dire

Chandra - A Day Without Success

An action-packed leadoff to this year's Wavelength festival, with the first of a couple local all-star ensembles. Drawing from Bile Sister and friends in their orbit, Chandra's backing ensemble now features Julie Reich and Vic Cheong (vox), David Jones (keyb), Penny Clark (guit), Nyles Miszczyk (bass) and Jesse Locke (drums). Even playing first, they had a chance to play to a pretty full room, as the night featured discounted admission to RSVP-ers from an energy drink company (and, apparently, a long line down the block of folks hoping to get in).

With this occasional partnership stretching out over a few years now, the group were a firing on all their new wave cylinders behind Chandra Oppenheim — who herself also looked a bit more relaxed on stage, now and then dancing a little and allowing a faint smile that suggested an understanding between the self of her now and the teenaged one who had originally penned these songs. Besides featuring the songs from the reissued album, the group also tackled the unreleased "A Day Without Success", which is apparently an unreleased demo track from that era.

Recording: New Positions

Artist: New Positions

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Dundas Video (Track Could Bend #22), January 3, 2017.

New Positions - [excerpt]

This noisy project from Neil Rankin and HSY's C. Jude has been gradually morphing for a couple years now. Last heard with doom-y drum-machine pulses and punishing volume, the project has shifted again with the addition of Bile Sister's Julie Reich as a third member. I suspect in a room with a bigger sound system this would rise more to the industrial thrum we've heard before, but for this set there was a sense of restraint that was really fascinating — we'll see how that's integrated when the band gets back to their volume-pummelling ways.

[Track Could Bend returns once more to Dundas Video on February 7th, with sets from Bachelard, Upanishads and organballoon.]

Recording: Remedy Malahyde

Artist: Remedy Malahyde

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Dundas Video (Track Could Bend #12), March 1, 2016.

Remedy Malahyde - unknown

When I asked Julie Reich (known for her work in Bile Sister) to play TCB, I thought she might bring something like her solo electronic alter ego Dohn Valley to the show. Instead, she took the invitation to experiment or collaborate in new ways to heart and showed up as half of a new duo with Natalie Logan (known both for her visual work as well as past musical endeavours). Playing their first show together, the pair had staked out their own space of Shaggs-y drum-beats, minimalist guitar and reverbed-out co-vocals. Sounding a bit like, say, Golden Triangle covering U.S. Maple, they stated that this one-off had achieved escape velocity, so look for more to come from this pairing.

[Track Could Bend returns to Dundas Video on Tuesday, April 5th for its First Anniversary Spectacular, which will feature an all-star assortment of players from the series' first year both in some new recombinations as well in instant "bands-from-a-hat" improvised sets.]

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Bile Sister

Artist: Bile Sister

Song: Track Your Transit

Recorded at Geary Lane (Summer Sesh @ Geary Lane), July 26, 2014.

Bile Sister - Track Your Transit

Who says we can't have nice things? Local promotion duo Man Finds Fire launched their new venue with an afternoon party, showing off a beautiful space nestled in a warehouse-like building in the industrial strip by Dufferin and Dupont. The main floor features a large (but not imposingly cavernous) open area, with a bar and couches and tall white walls that give the whole thing the feel of a modern art gallery. There's even a comfy upstairs patio with a nice view of the railway tracks and the city beyond. Recently used for film work, the room also sounds more like an intimate hall than a reverberating cave. It's a bit off the beaten track, but well-worth heading out for. Promising to specialize in more experimental sounds (their next couple shows are already announced), let's wish MFF great success and a long tenure at Geary Lane.

The afternoon opened with Julie Reich's squelch/funk project Bile Sister in a drummer-less trio format. The ever-evolving band continues to elongate their grooves, as demonstrated by a song that's now double the length of its recorded incarnation.